Defining "skedaddle"
« previous post | next post »
In the Fox News recording of Donald Trump's 7/8/2025 cabinet meeting, at around 17:33, there's a Walt Whitman-esque description of various historical U.S. raids on Iran, culminating in an interesting example of how to define a word by repeating it with emphatic voice quality.
Here's a bit of the context:
I mean if you compare that to
the same country
the hostages from
years ago
Jimmy Carter it was unfortunate for Jimmy Carter he was a nice man but
with the helicopters going down
the sandstorms the
prisoners they got captured
then the election
and the prisoners
and Reagan and all the prob-
it was nothing but problems and uh
and that was a failure and ours was
not only the pilots I mean
those machines flew for thirty seven straight hours they didn't stop.
They went skedaddle
you know the word skedaddle?
It means skedaddle.
They dropped the bombs
and they c-
and somebody said skedaddle
let's get the hell out of here
and every bomb hit its mark
uh and hit it beaut-
hit it incredibly
Of soldiers, troops, etc.: To retreat or retire hastily or precipitately; to flee.
Originally U.S. military slang, introduced during the Civil War of 1861–5.
with a first citation from the New York Tribune in August of 1861:
No sooner did the traitors discover their approach than they ‘skiddaddled’, (a phrase the Union boys up here apply to the good use the seceshers make of their legs in time of danger).
The etymology is given as "probably a fanciful formation", where I guess "fanciful" means "onomatopoetic"? But Wikipedia sez that it's
Possibly an alteration of British dialect scaddle (“to run off in a fright”), from the adjective scaddle (“wild, timid, skittish”), from Middle English scathel, skadylle (“harmful, fierce, wild”), perhaps of North Germanic/Scandinavian origin, from Old Norse *sköþull; or from Old English *scaþol, *sceaþol (see scathel); akin to Old Norse skaði (“harm”). Possibly related to the Ancient Greek σκέδασις (skédasis, “scattering”), σκεδασμός (skedasmós, “dispersion”). Possibly related to scud or scat. It is possibly a corruption of "Let's get outa here".
Barbara Phillips Long said,
July 10, 2025 @ 11:34 am
I would have thought it might be related to “scuttle,” which I think of as a sort of surreptitious kind of running away — as opposed to skedaddle, which is outright running away. The information on scuttle does not seem to reference “scaddle,” and if skedaddle is an Americanism, then I wonder if “scaddle” was in common use in the U.S. when skedaddle was coined. Some etymology for scuttle:
scuttle(v.1)
"run hurriedly, scamper, scurry," mid-15c. (implied in scuttling), probably related to or a frequentative form of scud (v.). Also compare scut (n.1). Related: Scuttled.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
[T.S. Eliot, from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"]
As a noun, "a short, hurried run," by 1620s.
also from mid-15c.
scuttle(v.2)
"cut a hole in the bottom or sides of a ship," especially to sink it, 1640s, from skottell (n.) "small, square hatchway or opening in a ship's deck" (late 15c.), from French escoutille (Modern French écoutille) or directly from Spanish escotilla "hatchway," diminutive of escota "opening in a garment," from escotar "cut (clothes to fit), cut out." This is perhaps from e- "out" (see ex-) + a word borrowed from a Germanic language (ultimately from PIE root *sker- (1) "to cut"). Figurative sense of "deliberately sink or destroy one's own effort or project" is by 1888. Related: Scuttled; scuttling.
And from after in the entry under related words:
scud(v.)
"to move quickly, shoot or fly along with haste," 1530s, a word of uncertain origin, perhaps echoic somehow, or perhaps it is a variant of Middle English scut "rabbit, rabbit's tail," in reference to its movements (see scut (n.1)), but there are phonetic difficulties with that. Perhaps it is rather from a North Sea Germanic source akin to Middle Low German, Middle Dutch schudden "to shake" (see quash). OED is against connection with Danish skyde "shoot, push, shove," Old English sceotan "to shoot." Related: Scudded; scudder; scudding.
Especially nautical, "to run before a gale with little or no sail set" (1580s). As a noun, "act or action of scudding," by c. 1600, from the verb. With many extended senses, such as "small shreds of clouds driven rapidly along under a mass of storm cloud," attested by 1660s. The noun also was the NATO reporting name for a type of Soviet missile introduced in the 1960s.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/scuttle
ktschwarz said,
July 10, 2025 @ 11:46 am
The origin of "skedaddle" is a famous mystery: it's featured in Anatoly Liberman's Word Origins and How We Know Them and Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, which is a collection of his favorite words with controversial etymologies where he thinks he can shed some light. (Including "boy" and "girl" — yes, those are both of obscure origin!) Liberman does tend to exaggerate the certainty of his preferred theories, but he's exhaustive in covering all recorded guesses on the subject, and that's valuable. For an online summary, see Dave Wilton's Wordorigins.
It's mysterious because it burst into international fame during the US Civil War, and nobody knew where it came from — a lot of silly guesses were floated at the time, such as the Ancient Greek perpetuated by Wiktionary. (Etymological lunacy didn't begin with the internet!) The Google ngram is amusing, and would make a great addition to the post, especially if you separate US and UK use: a giant spike in the US right at the Civil War, with almost immediate uptake in Britain, then falling back to about the same levels on both sides ever since.
Why did you cite Wiktionary and not American Heritage or Merriam-Webster, which are equally free and professionally edited? Wiktionary's "alteration of British dialect scaddle …" is plagiarized directly from MW; AHD concurs with this as the only one worth mentioning, and it's the one favored by Liberman. This is plausible, but with no direct evidence yet found, it remains speculative. Wiktionary, as usual, fails to screen out the chaff.
And once again: that OED etymology is over a century old, from 1911. A hundred years is a long time, and there is usually more recent scholarship, as there is for this word; it's also been slightly antedated. By "fanciful" the OED was most likely trying to imply "sound-symbolic" rather than "onomatopoetic"; the sk- at the beginning is reminiscent of skate, skid, skip, scoot, skitter.
(Barbara Phillips Long: "scuttle" shares the same sound symbolism, that's all that's known. And no one has yet found evidence of "scaddle" in the US before "skedaddle"; it may have gone unrecorded, but if so it wasn't in common use.)
DCBob said,
July 10, 2025 @ 1:44 pm
Knowing nothing about it, I would speculate that skaddle and skedaddle are just dialect variants of "scatter."
Prior to the Civil War, a humorous term with the same meaning was "absquatulate."